Green Room

Just In Case You Forgot, If You Want To Take Back America & Love The 10th Amendment, You’re Racist

Empowered by an election result that will enable Chris Matthews to hear racist dog whistles anytime, anywhere, the fevered MSNBC Hardball host began a segment today to showcase just how racist the Republican Party is, especially white Southerners. He had all the stats of who voted by race, where. Missing from that, of course, was the stats of blacks voting almost 100% for Obama in key precincts in Pennsylvania. But I digress.

Matthews finishing his racial thesis, then begins this line of inquiry to his two guests – Republican strategist John Feehery and Democrat strategist, Joy Reid:

Matthews: Let me just go to something in the rhetoric, and you can read it both in your own ways. Romney kept saying, we’ve got a little montage, I’m going to take back America. We’re going to take back America. Take back America. You know, I have to live with the fact that the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team. I guess they gave themselves the name. I don’t know how they got it. But they do. But how did he get to be the American candidate? That’s what I want to know. Who named him that?

John Feehery: Well, that’s a frequent thing in politics. People always…

Matthews: I never heard Obama say take back America.

Feehery: Well, you know, this is not that unfamiliar. The idea that we’re going to take back the White House, we’re going to restore America, we’re going to renew America, hope and change, whatever you want to call it, the team that’s out of power wants to take back power. And that’s, I don’t think that’s racially motivated. I think it’s ridiculous to think it is.

Joy Reid: No, but you know what, John? Look at the Tea Party’s rhetoric, because that’s where this whole take back America stuff started. These were people that were looking at the colonial period as the idyllic period in American history, the period before you had unions, before you had racial integration, this sort of America in which African-Americans were 3/5th of a person. That was the era that the Tea Party saw as the idyllic period in American history. And I think to your point about 2010, let’s not compare apples to oranges. What happens in midterms is that minority voters and younger voters stay home. So sure, you can win a Pennsylvania or an Ohio or a Michigan in an off-year election when basically, white voters are the ones coming to the polls. When you add the ethnic dimension, and you add younger voters, all of a sudden it becomes a lot harder for Republicans.

So now if you say you want to take back America, regardless of whether it’s on policy or not, you’re racist. But Matthews wasn’t through. A moment later, all you 10th Amendment people, you’re now racist, too.

Matthews: Anyway, you talk about the 10th Amendment in the South. Why is the 10th Amendment, which reserves powers to the states from the federal government, so much at issue with Republicans? Why do they love that 10th Amendment so much? It sounds like the Civil war to me.

Exit question: How long before someone on MSNBC proclaims the 22nd Amendment as being racist, because it prevents the first black president from being able to be president for life? After all, the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, and you know how racist that period of time was, don’t you? I mean, that was pre-civil rights era.

Did you know that in 1937 the Institute for Propaganda Analysis was established “to educate the American public about the nature of propaganda and how to recognize propaganda techniques. . . . [It] identified “the seven most common “tricks of the trade” used by successful propagandists.”

I was taught about those basic propaganda techniques in my 10th grade civics class along with information on some of the logical fallacies.

I’m working on writing some things up on propaganda, and last week I went to the public library for some books. I discovered that there is not one, not one, book on propaganda in the entire county. There is not even a category on propaganda in the system! I couldn’t believe it, and so I asked a research librarian who confirmed this for me. She told me that the library was becoming what she termed a “popular library.” Talk about dumbing down the general population! My alternatives are to sort through books about giving speeches and making sales or go through the inter-library loan system.

Online I have found some articles on propaganda. Most of the authors are liberals or libertarians. They are fine as far as they go in listing and defining propaganda techniques, but when they start giving illustrations, then their own biases creep in and become evident.

It’s obvious that the Dems and the Left use them all of the time. It’s also obvious that if any Reps ever learned them in high school or else where that they’ve forgotten them, because they certainly seem unable to call the Dems on their manipulation.

The four most important words in the 10th Amendment are the last four, the ones that go completely ignored in most discussions about this amendment. Paraphrasing, the 10th says if the Consitution doesn’t explicity grant a power to the federal government (prosecuting war for ex.) or prohibit the states from executing a power (minting a currency, for example) that power, whatever it is, defaults to the states OR TO THE PEOPLE.

The states are not the default position. Power (read that RESPONSIBILITY) defaults to the smallest unit of government capable of handling it. And what is the smallest unit of government? It is the individual citizen.

So the common defense is a federal responsibility. Lesser things like building roads and bridges can be handled by states and municipalities, but not by individual citizens, so states and municipalities SHOULD handle that kind of stuff.

Entering into private contracts with health care providers is something individual citizens can do and SHOULD do without government involvement at ANY level.

But since gov’t DID get involved, health care has become so complicated that the gov’t now says “this is so complicated now that only we, the gov’t, can handle it.

Question: If you are in a relationship with someone who is very unhappy and all they want to do is break the relationship and leave why would you say no, when you already have a very low opinion of that person? do you say no out of pride or control?

I mean that is whats going on here, the blue states think the red state are full of bible tumping retards and the red states think the blue states are full of statist psuedo-intellectuals who would rather go bankrupt than admit they are wrong. why would you want to live in this constant state of acromony? We had a Civil War ok, but according to some on one side of the argument wars never solve anything and according to the red side the constitution has has been so violated that the basis of the relationship is gone and therefore the red states wouldnt be breaking it if they just left.

I’m not a racist, but I know one when I see (or hear) one. And Chris Matthews, you sir, are a racist.

The Democratic Party and their sycophantic hangers-on have made tribalism the “new normal”. Very well then. Out of preservation for myself and my descendants, I will embrace tribalism by hewing to the positions my tribe take. If people of color decide they like those positions, they’re welcome to join my tribe, because my tribe doesn’t dwell on skin color, or national origin, or religious creed. If not, screw them. I’m sticking with my tribe (which used to be called American).

Chris Matthews and his dimwitted “Racism is everywhere!” crew clearly don’t like the 10th Amendment, and it’s comical how they aren’t smart enough enough to understand why people who do like it consider them to be stupid, big-government control freaks who don’t like what America stands for, or its rule of law.

So now if you say you want to take back America, regardless of whether it’s on policy or not, you’re racist. But Matthews wasn’t through. A moment later, all you 10th Amendment people, you’re now racist, too.

Got two words for Matthews. But I won’t use them. OK, I’ll use the last one, “you”.

i don’t think you read the article or listened to the interview. the revealed context of atwaters off-the-record remarks rather undermines the way progressives had been making use of them.

i won’t dispute that there’s been something of a fusion of small-government ideology and white, rural identity. this is however a reaction. the act of social manipulation which set the conditions for that fusion was the cynical manipulations of the Johnson administration, who, while cackling about shutting “nigras” up with half-measure legislation and buying them back for the Democrat party, sold his Great Society program to black americans as a form of reparations. of course, far from the independence genuine reparations would effect, the LBJ’s big success was in creating a system which incentivised absentee-fatherhood and resegregated northern cities with public housing high-rises, effectively generating all of the suffering urban black people have experience over the last forty years.

progressives may find it politically effective to permanently divide the country and then fire accusations of racism at whoever tries to discuss it honestly, but their ultimate gain will be a burnt, salted tundra. if all you desire is power, then i guess it doesn’t matter.

progressives may find it politically effective to permanently divide the country and then fire accusations of racism at whoever tries to discuss it honestly, but their ultimate gain will be a burnt, salted tundra. if all you desire is power, then i guess it doesn’t matter.

eh on November 19, 2012 at 10:31 PM

How long does anyone think the progressives are going to be able to hold together a coalition of groups of people who hate each other, such as blacks and Mexicans, muslims and gays, muslims and jews, union workers and environmental whackos, etc? I don’t see that as a long-lasting plan, but more of a power grabbing short term thing.

How long does anyone think the progressives are going to be able to hold together a coalition of groups of people who hate each other, such as blacks and Mexicans, muslims and gays, muslims and jews, union workers and environmental whackos, etc? I don’t see that as a long-lasting plan, but more of a power grabbing short term thing.

Night Owl on November 19, 2012 at 11:02 PM

They “contribute” more and that’s what counts. Detroit and California are lands flowing with milk and honey, Night Owl.

Did you know that in 1937 the Institute for Propaganda Analysis was established “to educate the American public about the nature of propaganda and how to recognize propaganda techniques. . . . [It] identified “the seven most common “tricks of the trade” used by successful propagandists.”…

This Joy Reid person is apparently unaware that because of the Tea party, the GOP delegation actually was made more diverse in 2010, our big year of wins. Tea party candidates like Marco Rubio, Allen West, Tim Scott and others defeated white Democrats.

When do I get to call the Dems racist and sexist for voting for white men over Mia Love and Allen west? Isn’t it sexist that they voted for a white male over Martha McSally, the first female USAF fighter pilot? Back to the kitchen, Martha–right, Democrats?

These were people that were looking at the colonial period as the idyllic period in American history, the period before you had unions, before you had racial integration, this sort of America in which African-Americans were 3/5th of a person.

Johnny Friendly and unions were needed in the colonial period? Who knew?

And she still doesn’t understand that whole 3/5 of a person business.

Hey, lady, wake up. The non-slaveholding states insisted on it so that the slave states weren’t overrepresented in the House of Representatives.

I’m tired of fighting it – I am a racist. There are you happy now Matthews? Will you shut up now?

gophergirl on November 19, 2012 at 7:18 PM

I know. Has there ever been in a time in recent history when ordinary tax paying citizens were so slandered by their government and its palace guard media? We shouldn’t have to fight this bigotry against us.

Irreconcilable differences.
We are long past due for an amicable divorce.
Why on earth would the Dems object to a nice peaceful split?
They could then institute whatever kind of leftist utopia that they desired without any resistance from conservatives.

Shoot, make a reality show out of it-watching the two separate nations making a go of it.
That’s one reality show that I would actually watch- seeing how a full bore Dem nation fared.

Hard to believe such a little man can make so much money…that is the true American story, an idiot can be a millionaire…the statement of “Anyone can make it in America” is proven by Chrissie, truly one of the most vile, ignorant person in the media…next to Ted Turner.

I just love it when, if we talk about getting back to America’s founding principles, the left immediately runs up the canard that we want to reinstitute slavery. As if that were the only thing America was ever about prior to 1960.

They remind me of a bunch of fifth graders gathering around a dictionary with the sole purpose of looking up all the dirty words.

Actually, they know exactly what we mean. They simply bring up the slavery angle to shut down the debate.